Law Enforcement Day promises to uncover the truth about crime scenes

CANTON  SUNY Cantons fourth annual Law Enforcement Day is reaching beyond campus to bring in the professionals who influence television police dramas.

The program is an opportunity for students and community members to better understand the work entailed in criminal investigations.

The event, sponsored by the colleges student chapter of the American Criminal Justice Association, will bring local and nationally known criminal investigation experts today to Richard W. Miller Campus Centers Kingston Theater.

Lecturers will be discussing the most modern tools used to solve crimes, said associate professor Susan E. Buckley, head of the colleges Criminal Justice Department.

The students, hopefully, will be able to walk away with a piqued interest in these different specialties within the discipline, Mrs. Buckley said.

We talk about blood splatter in a couple of our classes, but these are people that are still in the field doing it.

Keynote speaker Thomas L. Martin, a retired state police crime scene senior investigator, will be discussing blood splatter analysis at 1 p.m. as a part of the daylong event.

Mr. Martin has been an expert guest analyst on television programs such as Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee, Forensic Files and On the Case with Paula Zahn.

He also has appeared on the HBO series Autopsy and has written several books.

Were going to talk about crime scene forensics in general and specifically how blood stains pertain to crime scenes, and what kind of things separate them from the factual things that we do in the real world versus the fictional nonsense that we see on television, Mr. Martin said.

The free sessions are open to the public. Mrs. Buckley said the interest in television shows based on criminal investigations should pique the communitys interest.

Other scheduled speakers include Clarkson University associate professor Stephanie Schuckers, who will discuss fingerprint recognition software at 9 a.m.; Onondaga County Medical Examiner Dr. Robert Stoppacher, who will discuss death investigations at 10 a.m., and Onondaga County Sheriffs Department forensics document examiner and SUNY Canton adjunct instructor Dwayne Wisbey, who will give a talk on document analysis at 11 a.m.

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